A Lamb Without Blemish

We live in very difficult times, perilous times, the Bible talks about, and it is so true. And if you just look at the news, for instance, what's happening in Europe, it is quite drastic. Just in the, not the most recent Beyond Today magazine, but the one before the January-February one, in the middle pages there is an article called, Europe at Crossroads. Europe at Crossroads. And in this article it gives a little bit of background to what's happening in Europe, which is basically caused by problems in the Middle East. And we've got a very, very significant or instructive study Bible, study guide, which guides you to study the Bible on this topic about the Middle East in prophecy. But there are a number of chapters in this book that explains some of the history and background of the issues that are affecting the Middle East and which are, in other words, overflowing or going over the borders now into Europe. And it's really very serious. We're going to see great changes happening in Europe. We're going to see great changes happening in the Middle East. And things are going to get worse and worse. They are clear Bible prophecies that things are getting really bad. And therefore, it's not just going to be to the church, I mean to the world only, but it's going to be to the church as well. As in the church, we're going to be affected. Very seriously affected. It's going to be affecting you in this country. It's going to be affecting in this country problems. We see it. I'm not saying there's going to be now, but there's going to be some degree of unrest. It looks like it's going that direction. Maybe not soon, but maybe in a few years down the road. And it does not give me any joy to say this. It's not worth any joy. We all mourn for this. And we cry and cry as we see the sins of the sword. But we then realize there's only one hope. Only one hope.

And that is the real governor, the real president that will come, the real king that will come to establish the only government, the only kingdom that will bring peace to the sword, which is Jesus Christ. But for him to qualify for that role, he had to first be a lamb without blemish, a lamb without any sin. And so, let's look at when this was first described in the Bible, which is in Exodus chapter 12. So, let's turn with me, please, to Exodus chapter 12. Now, last week I covered a little bit of this topic. So, this week I am going to take from where I covered last week and take it a little bit further.

Starting reading in verse 1, Exodus 12, now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt. Now, there were the Israelites, the West slaves, so clearly there were not great designers of calendars and things like that. So, they were there and the month came, which happened at that time, and God told Moses, this month shall be the beginning of the month. So, this month shall be your first month. So, they knew which month it was. They knew when it would happen. They knew when was the first day and when was the tenth day and when was the fourteenth. So, he says, this is the month. It shall be the first month of the year to you. So, we are seeing something here now, which is going to be the institution of the Passover being established. That first time that it's actually documented here in the Bible. Now, it is possible that that was already explained at the time of Adam and Eve to Abel and Cain. It is possible, and it's possible that was the offering of the Passover that Abel was doing. I'm not saying it was, but it's possible. Nonetheless, continue reading here in verse 3. We see, speak to all the congregation of Israel saying, on the tenth day of this month, on the tenth day of Nisan, of Abib, as some people call it. So, they both mean the same thing. One is just in one language, the other one is derivative from other language. On the tenth day of this month, every man shall take for himself a lamb according to the house of his father a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor, next to his house, take it accordingly to the number of persons. According to each man's need, you shall make your count for the lamb. And your lamb shall be without blemish. You are to select, you are to take this lamb on the tenth, and it will be without blemish, without spot. And it says, a lamb of the first year, you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. So, yeah, we have a lamb without blemish, which was selected on the tenth. Did Christ forefold that prophecy? Did Christ forefold that prophecy? Now, you and I know that the fourteenth of that year that Christ died was which day of the week? A Wednesday. So, if you work backwards, the tenth was a Sabbath. Right? So, if the tenth was a Sabbath, the eleventh was what we call today a Sunday, the twelfth a Monday, the thirteenth a Tuesday, and the fourteenth was the Wednesday. Christ was crucified on the fourteenth. Right? Fourteenth. So, on the tenth, he was selected to be this lamb. Let's look at that in the New Testament. And that is in Matthew 21. Matthew 21. Now, when they drew near Jerusalem and came to Bethphage at the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent to disciples, saying to them, going to the village opposite, and immediately you will find a donkey who is going to the village opposite. And, immediately you will find a donkey who is going to the village opposite. And, immediately you will find a donkey tied and a colt.

Take note. It's a donkey and a little baby donkey. It's two. Not one. It's two. It's a donkey and a little baby donkey. A colt. Loose them and bring them to me.

And if anyone says anything to you, shall say the Lord as near of them. And, immediately you will send them. And this was done that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Tell the daughter of Zion, Behold, your king is coming to you lowly or meek. As in the word could also be translated, and sitting on a donkey, a colt, the fall of a donkey. And it was he was sitting on the baby one. And because it was still a baby donkey, the mother went within. So there were two.

Now, this is prophesied in Zechariah 9 verse 9. So I want you to keep a marker there in Matthew 21, and let's look at Zechariah 9 verse 29. There's not too many pages back.

Zechariah 9, 29. I think about 9, 9. Zechariah 9 verse 9 says, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Now, who's the daughter of Zion?

It's not Zion. It's the daughter of Zion. In other words, it's the Church of God. Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king is coming to you. Jesus Christ is coming to us. A second coming is coming, but it also prophesied about the first.

He says, He is just and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey, a colt, the fall of a donkey.

You see, that's talking about the first coming. I'll cut off the chariot from Ephraim and a horse from Jerusalem. The battle bow shall be cut off.

In other words, there's going to be walled peace, but that's not talking about the second coming. You see, Yah is the Messiah, and when you look at prophecy, it's actually saying, well, this is going to be the first coming. This is going to be the second coming. But when you look at, like looking at from the top, you don't see the time gap between the two. You know, there is a time gap, but then when you look at this way, they all look on the same plane. But if you look at an multi-dimensional, there is a time gap from one to the other, and that's what the people do not understand. You see, because when you look at that way, it appears that one and the other are the same, but they're not. They are at different time frames. So now it's talking about the second coming. It says, the battle bow shall cut off, there will be world peace. He shall speak peace to the nations. And there is, he shall speak peace to the nations.

And it says, his dominion, his government, the kingdom of God, shall be from sea to sea. That's what we see in prophecies like Daniel 2, and when that stone that is cut off, not by any man, it's thrown onto the feet of that statue, and everything crumbles, and that will be a world governing kingdom, a world government by God, by Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And from the river to the ends of the earth, so it will cover the whole world. It will be a world government. Verse 11, as for you also, because of the blood of your covenant, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. At that time, of Christ's Second Coming, the nations, the Israelites, the people, will be in a pit without water, in other words, without any hope. And Christ will set them free from that hopeless situation, because Christ will come, and you and I can see the way the world is going. It's going that way. He's the only hope that we have. So let's go back to Matthew 21, where we were reading, and we read verse 5. So let's continue reading a little further in verse 8. And it says, and a very great multitude spread their clothes on the road. Others cut down branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And then the multitudes went before, and those who followed cried out, saying, Hosanna, the son of David! They accepted Jesus Christ as the Messiah on that day, the 10th of Nisan. Which is what the world calls today Palm Sunday. The only difference is, it was not on Sunday, it was on the 7th. It was on the 10th of Nisan. And blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest. And when he had come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, who is this? So the multitude said, this is Jesus, the Savior, the prophet from Nazareth of Galilee. They accepted him. He was chosen as our sacrificial lamb, unblemished on that 10th of Nisan.

And so the multitudes said that, verse 11, verse 12, then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, overturned the tables of the money changes and the seats of those who sold doves. So this was unestablished. This is in fact the second time he does it, right? You look through the Gospels, the seats the second time he does it. And this is right before he was crucified. And symbolically, to me, it kind of means that he is going to, when he comes back as the returning king, he is going to fix this place up.

That's what it means. He's going to fix it up. And he's not going to be mild and meek and whatever it is. He's going to go out and do it. And he says, verse 13, and he said to them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.

Then the blind and the lame came to him in the temple and healed them, as he often did, healed people on the Sabbath. Why did he heal so many people on the Sabbath? Because the Sabbath represents the wonderful world tomorrow, when the world will be healed. And therefore, it was a wonderful opportunity, analogy, to point to the ultimate rest, the Sabatismus, the wonderful millennium, when the world will be healed from this disease that we have today.

And when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things he did, and the children crying, and Altena temple and saying, Alzheimer to the son of David, they were indignant. They were mad. They were jealous because the empire was being crashed. And said to him, do you hear? They said to Christ, do you hear what these people are saying?

And Jesus said to them, yes, have you never read out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants? You have perfected praise. He knew how to shut them up so quickly. But they hated him for the more. And therefore, he says on verse 17, and he left them and went out of the city to Bethany, and he lodged there. So he went and slept there. And in the morning, the next day, which was Sunday, which was Sunday, then he started this great discourse there. He started this great discourse with people.

And then you have Matthew 23, where he really attacks the Pharisees and calls them hypocrites. And then you have Matthew 24, where he goes to the Mount and teaches his disciple about times of the end. And then you have Matthew 25, the same discourse where he gives the parables implied that we need to be waiting and be ready and not be like the foolish virgins and saying that the Son of Man is going to come, he's going to reward according to our deeds, our works, and and he's going to judge the world.

So very significant prophetic of... And then we get into chapter 26. It says now... So this obviously then was on the 11th of Nisan, because he was selected on the 10th, which was Sabbath. This great discourse was the next day on Sunday, which was a bigger part of... He was selected on the 10th, did I say the 10th? I hope I said that's what I meant to say anyway. Then the next day he went to sleep as we saw and he gave this discourse on the next day, which had been 11th.

And then on chapter 26, it says, verse 1, when it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these signs, he said to his disciples, you know that after two days is the Passover. So it was the 11th, so after two days, that's the 12th and the 13th, that means the Passover is on the 14th. So we clearly see that his selection was on the 10th. So that clearly is self-evident then. But let's look at the point of when he spread out those clothes. Those clothes. He was quoting prophecy as well, which is in Isaiah 62.

You may make a note and look at that. I run about from verse 10 to 12 and he's prophesying his Second Coming.

So we have seen that Jesus Christ fulfilled the prophecy of Exodus 12, that he was the land without blemish, that was selected on the 10th day of the first month. He was the land without blemish. We also know because of that, he's our Savior. As we heard in the sermonette, we need to visualize, we need to see what he's done and the final outcome to help us believe, to help us do our part and remain loyal to the end and fight for. Because we know that Jesus was sinless. In other words, a land without blemish. He was the land of God. That's what John the Baptist said. Remember, at the beginning, Yah is the land of God. But he does say also that you and I are to imitate Jesus Christ. Now you and I will never be a land without blemish because we have many blemishes and we still continue having them and we're still but the only reason that we can be counted worthy is by the grace of God. Because he loves us, because he cares for us, he has such desire to see us in the kingdom. And it's like, as his parents, have this graciousness, desire for the success of our children and the well-being of our children. And that's why God created the family. So we can start to understand a little bit of these feelings towards us by how we love our children and grandchildren and this just desire to see them do succeed and when they do wrong, we prepare to forgive, provide us his repentance, we provide us a change of heart.

We know that you and I are supposed to imitate Jesus.

It says, follow me. That means we got a following.

In Matthew 5, at the end of Matthew 5, if I remember correctly, it says, be you perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Now, you and I will never achieve actual perfection in this life, but we are striving to become more and more perfect and we're working at that and we're becoming more perfect and our hearts need to become more perfect. Our hearts need to be right within. And then Jesus Christ will do the rest. We'll close the gap. We'll close the gap because God and Christ's grace towards us. They'll close the gap.

Immediately after the Passover, we know that we get into the days of a leavened bread for seven days. That's also in Exodus 12. I don't have to go there now, but you can read that section. It says it for seven days. Why seven?

Because seven means complete. And so we are to completely strive and do our best to remove leaven out of our lives spiritually. Now, I've mentioned this before. It is amazing that God's days take leaven out of our lives.

It doesn't say take bananas out of your lives. Now, if you were to take bananas out of your lives, it would be an easy job. You take bananas out, and that's it. But taking leaven out of our homes, it's something different. And why do we do it? Because it brings us a lesson that it's not easy. Because it hides everywhere. Leaven hides everywhere. You're looking at crannies and little hooks and things like that. And there's many stories that people in the church have said. Well, I've looked everywhere, and then halfway during the feast, I open my cup and say, WOW! There's some leaven, some cookie, or some bread. Oh! But there's the spiritual lesson. It's not sin. Now you take it out. Straight away, your heart was intent was to take it out. There's not sin in that. But the point is the spiritual lesson is that you and I have leaven, leaven, spiritually speaking, in our lives. And we don't see it.

Until one day, in our Christian life, in our Christian walk, maybe not on the day of baptism, maybe not a year later, maybe not two years later, maybe not three, maybe 20, 30 years down the road, we see, BANG! I've got this big loaf of leaven in my life, and I haven't seen it. It's a lesson to us. That's what that lesson is to us.

The physical is merely a symbol of a spiritual lesson. Now leaven is not sin.

Leaven is not sin. In fact, there are many, or at least there's one parable I can think of, that says the kingdom of God is like leaven that grows, you know? So leaven is not sin. The analogy is specifically applicable for those seven days to bring us a lesson. During those seven days, we ought to take leaven out to give us a lesson. During the rest of the year, we can have leaven around because leaven is not sin. It's just a teaching tool for that period to give us an important lesson.

But what is therefore the meaning of this leaven? I mean, you and I can say, well, it's sin. Yes, it is. But there is one area of this leaven that is very important for us not to forget. And that Paul addresses in 1 Corinthians 5. And so let's turn to 1 Corinthians 5, and we're going to start reading in verse 6. Now, to give you the context, there was a man in the church that was committing sexual immorality with the Ismaili law, let's put it that way. And I guess the husband had remarried, and he was in the church, and he was committing sexual immorality with the Mardane law. So, the people in the church were feeling we are such good, merciful, righteous people. We have so much mercy that we're just going to show mercy to this man and be merciful to him. And we are just such a merciful bunch of people, and we're allowing him there. And Paul says, listen, your boasting about your mercy is not good. That's what he says in verse 6. Your glory is not good. Your boasting, your arrogant proclaiming how great I am is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lot? Don't you know that a rotten apple leaving it in the basket sooner or later will affect all the other apples? Take it out.

Now, that's hard. That's hard. But if you are a minister and you've got to do it, that's hard. But it does say, justice first. When Christ talked to the Pharisees in Matthew 23, says, you have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faith. Which one comes first? Justice. Then upon repentance, mercy.

So, Paul was saying to them, therefore, verse 7, purge out the old leaven. What is the old leaven? It's this individual that was sinning in the congregation, telling you, you cannot fellowship with us until this is repented of, and there is a change in your life, and they are fruits worthy of repentance. Therefore, purge out the old leaven, so that you may be in your lump. And so, he's using the analogy of leaven. Take out the leaven from the dough, so that now it's a dough which is unleavened.

For, what's the bigger part? I jumped here. That you may be in your lump, since you truly are unleavened. Since you are unleavened. So, this was during the days of unleavened bread, so they were physically unleavened, but spiritually, they should be unleavened as well.

For, indeed, Christ, our Passover lamb, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. So, we are unleavened. In other words, we are without sin, because Christ has died for us. Yes, we are, spiritually speaking, but physically speaking, you're also unleavened, because you are, yeah, during the days of unleavened bread. Therefore, let us keep the feast. Which feast? The feast of the days of unleavened bread. Not with the old leaven. It was not with the sin, nor was the leaven, nor was the leaven of malice and wickedness, which is thinking and doing wrong things.

What Paul is saying, Yahya, is they had a problem of glory, of boasting. What causes boasting and glory?

What causes this feeling of, oh, we so good? The source of it is pride, lack of humility. They were boasting. They were proudful. They cared about themselves, and that led to pride, and that led to sin. And one of the great problems of sin in our lives is pride. One of the great problems that sometimes there's no reconciliation is pride. And we have to take that pride out, because that pride leads to malice and wickedness. As it says, they're malice, which is thinking wrong, and weakness, which is doing wrong.

You see, brethren, just like leaven hides, sin hides, leaven is everywhere. I think they even say that there is leaven in the air, so if you leave some dough in the air, after a while it would rise up, which is interesting. That's the spirit of the power of the air. So that's an interesting, different analogy there. But you see, leaven is everywhere, and therefore is very resilient. But likewise, pride and malice and wickedness are very resilient.

How does sin hide? How does pride hide in us? How does it hide in us?

Have we thought about it? Could I be proudful? Could we all be, some of us, all of us, be proudful?

We need to analyze that, and then we need to examine ourselves and see. You see the world today, through psychiatrists or psychologists or whatever they are, I think it's psychologists, that's the correct word. But anyway, through these experts, they say that the human heart is basically good. You know, people are basically good.

And basically society is being told that people are basically good. And so we have these minds which are absolutely perverted, causing crimes and bombings and shootings. They've just gone wrong. Oh, but they're basically good. It's just maybe something that happened around them or whatever it is.

Maybe it was just some bad parents they had, or maybe they had a heart. Dad, or maybe they had a divorce in the family and affected them. And maybe they had a bad childhood, you see. So all these are extenuating circumstances. They thought they're not bad. That's how the world reasons.

In other words, what they're saying is, the problem is outside, not inside. Because the real problem, what God says, is the problem is inside. Because if you have all those bad things, but inside is right, you're not going to allow them to affect you.

And why? Because, brethren, if we are right, or if our heart, our thinking is our acts of wickedness, or a choice that we all make, or a choice.

So, leaven is natural. It's in the air. Sin is natural to us, but we have to overcome it. We have to fight it. Look at Romans 8 verse 7. Look at Romans 8 verse 7.

Romans 8 verse 7 says, Because the coral mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. We all are made of the flesh. We all have that natural tendency to go in the wrong way. And if we don't manage it, if we don't control, if we don't make a choice to overcome and change, we are going to go the wrong way.

You know the story about the Pharisees?

When they came to Christ and they said, What's wrong with you? You're not washing your hands before you eat. And Christ said, Listen, it's not washing the hands. I mean, obviously, it was not eating with filthy hands, but this was the ceremonial washing that they had to wash their hands all the way up to, their elbows and things like that. So, it says, it's not what you eat that messes you up, but it's what comes out of your mouth that messes you up, because it comes from your heart.

You see, brethren, quite often, when we have problems, we can't see the problem, the real problem.

Could it be a reconciliation of people? Could it be the situation? Soon, we say, It's his fault. He must change. He must repent. And yeah, I'm not saying that the other person does not have faults, because we all have faults. But we need to look at ourselves, too. Because when we say, It's his fault or her fault, maybe we're saying, I'm righteous. Are we saying that? I'm righteous. I'm better than you, and you're not.

Or maybe we say, Well, I've changed, but he hasn't changed yet. And for now, I'm better off, because through all these years, I've changed.

Brethren, we're going to be careful that we don't become judgmental.

We need to look at ourselves. Are we saying words like that?

Forgive an example. Coming from South Africa, and I'm sure if you went to South Africa, you would see many problems that South Africans have, which I probably have, because of the way I was brought up, how my nature became the culture, and I don't see it. I'm blind to it. But the same thing happens to the South. Say, for instance, there is maybe some sort of culture, a way of seeing things, which is like of your region. Could be, for instance, in Kentucky. Could be in the North. Could be in the South. And could be just a natural thing to you. And therefore, you look at the other people and say, oh well, but you see, because where they come from, that's the problem in the other area. And we've got to look at ourselves, brethren. We've got to look at ourselves. Because quite often, we see ourselves through our own losses. Maybe we come back from a generation, we come from the generation of the fifties or the sixties, and we think that everybody should be like the fifties or the sixties, because we're more righteous. But are we? And I'm not saying that being of, in this age, people are less righteous. I'm not saying, we're, I'm just saying, we must not judge by our own little losses.

Because we are lacking to look at our hearts. We really have to look at our, we've got to confront the leaven that we have. And particularly now, as we get before Passover, we need to look at ourselves. And please brethren, I'm not talking about anybody, please. I'm just talking about myself. I need to look at myself. I need to analyze and examine myself. And I need to fast before Passover, and I hope we all take some time to do that, to actually look at ourselves and examine ourselves. Because, look at Jeremiah 17 verse 9. And therefore, it's not me saying, it's the Bible. In Jeremiah 17 verse 9, The heart is deceitful above all things. That's my heart. It's deceitful to me above all things, and I can't see it. I'm blind. It's like there's this big loaf of leaven in the cupboard in my home during the days of leavened bread, and I didn't notice it. But it's right there. Why? Because the heart is deceitful, and I didn't see it. And so what I'm asking is, we're preparing for the Passover, and yes, we're going to be leavened. But as we be leavened, don't forsake the really important exercise, quote-unquote, of the leavening, which is the spiritual. Which is the spiritual.

We need to look at the cause of our problems, of our lack of reconciliation, our lack of peace, or maybe of some divisions that may be, maybe in our families, maybe whatever it is. And the cause might be our pride.

Why? Because our heart is desperately wicked. And I'm not saying it's just one party, it could be both parties. It probably is both. We're both at wrong. So the heart is desperately wicked, it says. Desperately deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked! Who can know it? Desperately wicked! I was very sick, really sick, spiritually speaking.

Incurably ill. Obviously discurable with God's Holy Spirit, because God's Holy Spirit works in our heart and writes his laws in our heart and slowly through the years. God in his patience, God in his mercy towards me, as for the last 40 whatever number of years has been showing me things to change. I wish I'd seen them long ago. I'm only seeing some of those things now.

But I think it applies to all of us, and you and I have to admit it applies to all of us. As the Living Bible puts it, no one can really know how bad it is. It was the heart.

In verse 10 says, I the Lord search the heart, and I test the mind. God searches the heart. All right! What about me searching my own heart? What about you searching your own heart? We need to do that. We need to examine ourselves before Passover and look at ourselves and say, where is it that I'm deceiving myself? Thinking that I'm so good and so better than Joe the soap that sits next to me in church or whatever it is. And I'm just taking that as an example. But do we have anything like that? We need to look at ourselves. How many times have I mentioned before we repent not of what we have done, but of what we are. What we are is the desperately wicked heart. A heart which is deceitful to me, myself, and I, and to you, yourself, and you.

And that's the problem. That's the problem.

We have sinned in us. Now, thanks to God's grace, he will do the rest. But that does not justify us not to now try and cleanse our hearts. And Paul struggled with this. You know, let's look at Romans chapter 7. Romans chapter 7. You can see that and you've read that section many times.

Romans chapter 7.

Verse 18. Seven verse 18. It says, For I know that in me there is in my flesh nothing good dwells. Now, this was an apostle of Jesus Christ saying at that time, recognizing that in him nothing good dwelt. If Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, the position that he was, was the change in overcoming and the trials and the big things that he had, and he admitted that, shouldn't we do the same?

Paul struggled and he admitted nothing in us is good. Now, if you look at groups like alcohol anonymous and things like that, they say one of the things about overcoming alcoholism is admitting you've got a problem. Right? You and I have a problem. We've got a deceitful heart. Problems we can't see it quite often. And we want other comment until you and I admit that we have a problem.

Look at verse 23 of the same chapter. But I see another law that is in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me to captivity, to the law of sin, which is in my members. So with God's Holy Spirit in my mind, God's Holy Spirit is, there's this war between these two poles. And there's the poles of the flesh and the leading of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit never pulls, so there's the pull of the flesh and the leading of the Holy Spirit. And but you see there's this struggle in the mind. And we have to recognize that that is there. That sometimes we have wrong thoughts. Sometimes we take certain emotional positions that maybe we shouldn't take. Sometimes we say things that we shouldn't say. Am I saying it's you? No, I'm saying it's me. I'm talking to myself. But it's to all of us, too, because we all like that. I'm not any better than you, brethren. I have to learn. I have to look at myself. And I have to fast now before myself to look at these things and analyze myself and change and repent and look for those hidden sins that I have not seen in the past, but I have, which you probably can blatantly see. I can't. And but, conversely, the same could be true the other way around. I'm not saying it is, but I think we all should take the approach that it might be. And so, Paul recognized that there was sin in him. We need to recognize there's sin in me, in us, because it comes from inside. It's the inside that affects us. It's what we are, that we have to repent on, besides what we've done. And we've learned that. We know that, but it's good every year to remind ourselves. And the point is, we need to be honest with ourselves. And when we admit, that means we need to be honest. The problem is, we don't want to admit it, and we want to say, it's the other person's fault. It's the other person that must change. Maybe it's me. Maybe it's my culture.

You know? And maybe it's me. And so, let's analyze ourselves carefully. Let's analyze ourselves carefully. The problem is not with the law, as Paul said in Romans 7 verse 7. He says, it's not the law, it's ours. We have sinned. There's nothing wrong with the law. The law is just like a mirror that tells us where the sin is. So, what you need, and I need, is a mirror. So, look at the law. There's a mirror. And then, with the mirror, you look at your heart. And because you can't quite see it, you take a magnifying loss, and look at it, and look at yourself. And that's what we need to do. Every year, every day, but particularly before the Passover. We need to do that. We then, as we look at this, we see that sin.

Because that mirror, with the magnifying loss, you can see, oh, there's a pump all there! We're going to take that out, spiritually speaking. We've got that little sin out there, that we couldn't see it. But because we paid attention with the mirror and the magnifying loss, we now see that pump all. And we need to purify that and cleanse it, with the help of God's Holy Spirit. You and I cannot do it. We need God's help. But we need to acknowledge, we need to confess. If I have offended somebody else, and I know I've offended, because I said something, I need to be able to go to that person and confess to that person, apologize to that person, that I've said something wrong. I need to do that. Then, Christ's mercy, Christ and God's grace, will do the rest. You've got to understand that you and I will never be perfect, physically speaking, in this life. We're aiming, we're striving, the heart is becoming cleaner, God sees that, and then, at the resurrection, you will then close that gap in graciousness, by His grace, and His kindness, and His love towards us.

The problem is that you and I are, in a sense, by the way we are physical flesh. We have a tendency to go the way of physical things. In other words, we have a natural tendency to become carnally minded, and we have to fight that. We have to have self-control with the help of God's Holy Spirit, which is self-control is one of the fruit, or one of the dimensions of the fruit of God's Holy Spirit, have that self-control to control our minds. Look at Romans chapter 8 verse 5. It says, yeah, for those who live according to the flesh, set their minds on the things of the flesh. So what is it that we need to do? We need to make sure that our thoughts, when that wrong thought comes up, we've got to wash it away. We've got to turn it away. We must not allow that thought to exist in our mind. That thought could be a desire to have a certain attitude, a desire to have a certain emotion, a desire to have a certain behavioral attitude towards a brother or a sister. We've got to overcome that. We've got to put that away. But those who live according to the Spirit, anything goes to the Spirit. So we need to put to mind the things of God's Holy Spirit. We've got to really put to mind the things of God's Holy Spirit. So what are the things of God's Holy Spirit? And what are the things of the flesh? Well, Paul in Galatians describes that very clearly. So let's go there to Galatians chapter 5. Galatians chapter 5. Galatians chapter 5. Okay.

And we see in verse 16, he says, now I say then, walk in the Spirit. There was walk with thinking about the things of God's Holy Spirit that God inspires. And you shall not fulfill the last of the flesh. So if you keep your mind and your focus and when those wrong thoughts come along, Galatians 5 verse 16, when those then we put the thoughts that come from God's Holy Spirit, then we'll not go that way because we are overcoming, we are getting away. You know, it's like you're reading James, you know, you've got these desires and these desires, you allow them to be there, these thoughts. These thoughts then grow and then they become and they bear fruit, which is sin. What are we going to do is right the moment we see that, because there's this natural carnal tendency in us and we've got to change that. So we remain clean. Verse 17, for the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary to one another so that you do not do the things that you wish according to the flesh. You don't do those things according to you wish according to flesh. There's those desires. But what you do is you work on doing the things of the spirit. That's why it's so important for you to have God's spirit inside you. Because if you do not have God's Holy Spirit inside you in your mind, how can you fight it? You don't have the tool that you need.

It's like, for instance, we wanted to play the sound through this, but we were lacking a capability of connecting even though we had a cable, but we couldn't get to the plug to connect it and we couldn't get the sound for the music. So we had to make another plan. But the point is, if we don't have the right tools, the right things to help us, and spiritually speaking, the tool is God's Holy Spirit that He gives us as baptism. And we need that to be able to fight it, because otherwise we're handicapped. Otherwise we don't have the tools. Handicapped. We need that tool. So it continues, yeah? Verse 18. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. In other words, you're not under the penalty of the law. In other words, if you are doing the things that God wants you to do, you are not going to break God's law. And therefore, there's no penalty of death, because you've been forgiven. And God, whenever you do something wrong, it's not a practice. It's not your practice. It's not your way of living. It's not your practice. And because it's not your practice, God then forgives you and gives you help. So, through His grace. Now, the works of the flesh are evident. And then it goes through all of them, adultery, sexual immorality. Some Bibles translate as fornication, but they mean sexual immorality, which applies to single and married people, to both, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentious, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like. And others that I just can't go on with the list. That's basically what it's saying. Of which I tell you beforehand, just as I told you in time past, that those that practice such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God. The verb there is practice. It's not a slip up. It's not a slip up because you're trying to practice, you're trying to walk in the light, you're trying to live in the light, but you sin, you slip up, and you go to God and says, please forgive me, and God in His grace will forgive. Yes, grace is not only unmerited but it's His kindness, His love towards us that He just says, there you go, I love you so much, and you're trying so hard. That's possible. And it's so beautiful, so beautiful. But the fruit, the end result, what the Holy Spirit does is love, joy, peace, long suffering. That's patience. Being kind to other people, being good to other people, being faithful in the words, sticking to it, and being gentle or meek, being that teachable type individual, and self-control.

As I said, with God's Holy Spirit, we need to exercise self-control, and against such, there is no law.

So, pressure. Delivering is only a symbolism. A symbolism that points to us looking at ourselves, looking at our hearts, and the hearts may have various little problems. One of them may be pride, because that was Satan's major fault, and that pride can be seen in so many angles and in so many things. Pride has brought so much trouble to the Church, to the ministry, to all other. It's so sad. Pride has brought trouble to brethren, to fights amongst families. Why? Because you don't want to apologize. Or you don't want to let it go, because you're proud. And because of that pride, we don't reconcile. You've got to reconcile first with God, of course, as I gave some sermons about. But one of the root causes of problems is our pride. It's our pride, and we need to look at it. And as we go to the days of 11 bread, and as we learn of these lessons of taking leaven out, it requires a lot of self-control. It requires us using God's Holy Spirit of self-control, and then starting to overcome and grow in these areas. Brethren, as we are preparing for the days of 11 bread, we will never be the lamb without blemish. We've got plenty blemishes. But we ought to strive in that direction, to strive to become perfect. That is our goal. And so, as you prepare for it, and as you fast, please consider that your goal is to become like Christ. Not that you will become a lamb without blemish, but your goal is to be perfect, like the Heavenly Father is perfect.